Guest post by Steven Goddard
Wikipedia Image of Disaster Movie poster
While volcanic ash falls on Britain, in yet another assault on reason, the Royal Society has warned :
In papers published by the Royal Society, researchers warned that melting ice, sea level rises and even increasingly heavy storms and rainfall – predicted consequences of rising temperatures – could affect the Earth’s crust.
I also watched the movies 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, but apparently I didn’t take them as seriously as some – Zombieland was probably more realistic.
As the land ”rebounds” back up once the weight of the ice has been removed – which could be by as much as a kilometre in places such as Greenland and Antarctica – then if, in the worst case scenario, all the ice were to melt – it could trigger earthquakes. The increase in seismic activity could, in turn, cause underwater landslides that spark tsunamis. A potential additional risk is from ”ice-quakes” generated when the ice sheets break up, causing tsunamis which could threaten places such as New Zealand, Newfoundland in Canada and Chile.
Pleeezzz …. Even if these claims worth worth considering, it would take tens or hundreds of thousands of years for Greenland and Antarctica to melt.
Back in the real world we hear from the Icelandic Meteorological Service that the glacier is what is causing the ash :
Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Meteorological Office.believes the volcano has melted about 10 percent of the glacier
It still could take months for the volcano to burn through the rest of the glacier, to a point where the steam and ash would turn instead into lava, he said.
What he is saying is that the sooner the glacier melts, the sooner the volcanic hazards will subside. This must be tough to swallow for people who believe that world is better off when it is cold and icy.
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ashes, ashes, ashes,
all airplanes stay down.
It’s time to sacrifice a few
virginsRoyal Society members to the volcano gods.I never saw Zombieland, but I did see atack of the Mutant Zombie Strippers.
Since when has science progressed in such a climate of Doom and certainty.
The science acadamies are no longer doing test to dissertation.
So why aren’t the Hudsons Bay lowlands (in Canada) are plagued by one earthquake after another?
Did these people not do grade 6 science or geography?
Northen Canda has been rebounding for more that 10 thousand years and will continue to rebound for another few thousand.
Loose 2 miles of ice and the crust just pops back to where it was in the first pace in a mere 20 thousand years, only to get pushed down again, by the next ice age.
Idiots.
I’m assuming there is geographical evidence of the reverse happening as the ice formed? After all, I would have thought that the compression of the earth’s crust would have equal or greater impact?
I have to wonder if the crust that they are really interested in is their daily one that goes so nicely with the AGW scaremongering gravy train.
New England has been rebounding from glaciation for 12,000 years. Where are the volcanoes? At the mid-ocean ridges, of course. Not mid-continent.
New Zealand is doing fine thanks, we’ll blow torch our glaciers and get our own bounce, …following Royal Society reasoning, if we move all the really heavy rocks of our land mass we’ll beat the hypothetical sea rise, altogether.
We could go one better and shove a few mountain ranges into the sea, and voila, our Island will float, like a boat made of rocks.
We’ll enter it in the America’s cup, which we’ll win, cos its hard to out tack a two thousand kilometre long yacht. Odd though, when the boat is the port..
See… a silver lining to every imaginary, computer modelled, lucrative, catastrophic, global calamity.
Did you hear about the smart vulcanologist? He graduated magma cumme laude.
So what did you think of 2012? Fun eh? It was after all likely what would happen if the Earth’s core did heat up to millions of degrees as the Goracle soothsays. I loved the movie, and the Day After Tomorrow, and Zombieland, and Knowing… a healthy dose of fantasy is, well, healthy as long as one doesn’t take it as reality.
That’s the problem. Many people think that fantasy and science fiction IS reality.
A public informed by fantasy, mythological beliefs run rampant, and the distortions of science fiction has potentially had a disastrous impact upon critical thinking skills. The “possible” becomes the it is what is going to happen. Just because one can conceive it it’s real, and to be feared. It’s just magical thinking.
In addition, there seems to be a “rush to publish doom-saying scenarios” in scientific papers, journals and articles to get that “hit” boosting a career.
Yes many “doom and gloom scenarios” COULD potentially happen. The question is what are the ODDS? What is the probability? What is the mechanism that would make it so? How likely is that? All the ice melting? How much heat energy would that take (a huge amount as this article talks about http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/02/22/how-could-we-melt-enough-ice-for-a-20ft-rise-in-sea-levels)? How long would it take? Could it realistically happen given our OTHER knowledge of the world learned with science?
It seems that the “real climate” procrastinators soothsaying doom and gloom actually are the real climate deniers as they keep forgetting that just because something could happen doesn’t mean that it will happen. They seem to forget that science can rule things OUT as well as ruling them in.
In fantasy it’s enough that because something could happen it will happen. That’s the fun part of many movies and books and stories. That’s the basis of faith based beliefs.
In SCIENCE it’s NOT enough that just because something is possible in “principle” or “theory” or is “hypothesized” to possibly happen that it MUST happen or even WILL happen. The probability of it happening needs to be quantified using not just “theory” or “hypothesis” but it needs to be based on evidence in the real world somehow. The evidence against it happening must also be explored and if left out of assessments likely means a biased and flawed analysis.
A must read for everyone dedicated to the principles of the scientific method.
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2010/02/19/cargo-cult-science-a-lesson-from-richard-feynman-for-scientists-of-today-to-learn
Even the frogs aren’t safe – and we’re not talking about French chefs:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7606970/Frogs-threatened-by-climate-change.html
It’s been said several times that the reduced magnetosphere strength will likely have a mechanical effect on the earth’s crust, and thus volcanism.
Since it’s pretty likely that increased cosmic rays caused by reduced magnetic field strength and weakened solar wind contribute to cloud formation and cooling, it’s likely that more active volcanism is mildly related to climate change.
Our little corner of Northeasten Ohio is subject to “rebounding” quakes from the glacial retreat over 10,000 years ago.
We still have kames and bogs along with various moraines
dotting our landscape. In our immediate area we have hundreds
of feet of glacial till overlaying the bedrock.
We ride on top of the Laurentian shield as does most of Eastern North America.
There have been no known “tsunamis” reported in Lake Erie due
to such rebounding… which appears to be a slow affair even on
a geological time frame.
Iceland is at a confluence of tectonic plates… and more sujbect
to pressure from the motion of the plates and floor spreading
rather than pressure alleviation due to surface ice loss.
Regions riding on shields and platforms seem to be less subject
to rapid rebounds when ice is removed from the surface.
For major geologic shield regions, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_(geology)
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_geologic_provinces.jpg
“Prof McGuire called for a programme of research focusing on the potential geological hazards that global warming could bring, with the leading body on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), addressing the issue directly in its future assessments.”
Professor McGuire, you had me at “Hello!”
Though not clearly stated, it appears that steam from melting glaciers is what is providing the lift for ash particles to reach atmospheric heights. Without the ice, there will be no steam to lift the ash. Ergo, no ash.
But wait…
If the land will be rising that much from the ice melting, then we won’t have to worry about the ocean’s rising! Duh! Just move north, it will be nice and toasty there anyway, right? And a kilometer above the ocean! Problem solved!
Oh, I forgot that now all the volcanos will be erupting from the increased magma chamber size….
Is every academic in Britain required to be a twit nowadays?
The changes required in the crust to make seismic and volcanic events more dramatic are far beyond anything we are likely to experience from the effects of CO2.
Apocalyptic predictions have an unblemished record of being wrong.
This is why, instead of new EPA fuel economy standards (ala Obama), they should encourage SUVs. The weight of the SUVs might just prevent that rebound in the Earth’s crust
pwl (19:17:40) :
I thought Zombieland was great. It demonstrated the power of Twinkies over evil.
North Dakota and Manitoba, Canada areas have also been rebounding since the last glacial. New York and all of the North East have also been rebounding. Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and any United States north of Nebraska latitude are ALL also rebounding. When was the last time you saw a volcano erupt in any of those regions other than Mt. Saint Helen’s or Yellow Stone?
this is great comedy!
Examining the entrails of a goose. the soothsayer pronounced.”…….”
Desperation is in the air, team global warming has seen the future. It is not good, for liars incompetents and fools. As a joke I shall propose that due to the lower solar activity, earth is cold and shivering.Hence the quakes. Watch CBC this will be the gospel by summer. What was it Mark Twain said about human stupidity? It just keeps getting better.
2012 was entertaining as Sci Fi, and I do like Science Fiction, but when the movie is over, it’s back to the real world. The part I didn’t like is how the 2 Russian characters had to die. The bad people are supposed to eat it, not the good guys.
The process whereby the earth’s crust rises after it has been depressed by any weight (be it ice, water, or sediment deposition) and that weight is removed (by melting, drainage, or erosion) is called isostatic rebound. The area innundated by Lake Bonneville is still rising, albeit more slowly now since the most rapid rebound happens just after the weight is removed. The same process of isostatic rebound can be detected in areas where the glaciers once loomed large, likewise at a decelerating rate. The earth’s crust sits atop a heavier, semi-liquid layer called the asthenosphere that provides buoyancy proportional to the density differences in the two layers–mountain ranges have deeper “roots” than do lower-lying plains; the two are comparable to logs and sticks floating in water.
I for one anticipate a calm, measured response from Joe Romm on this.
So long as people will only accept mindless extremism, I’d like everyone to note that the sun is going out (as evidenced by lack of sunspots). And I’d like to recommend that we placate it with a good old fashioned aztec revival: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/6540
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgregein/3506075327/
I would suggest that the Royal Society members provide the first victims, but, they’ll end up running the affair.